


Three Inches of Space

by ThatRavenclawBitch



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A humble offering for the angst war, Angst, Canon Compliant Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 21:50:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15872412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatRavenclawBitch/pseuds/ThatRavenclawBitch
Summary: Rumple wakes up alone for the first time in years.





	Three Inches of Space

Rumplestiltskin had never needed sleep. It was one of the benefits of being the Dark One, or a draw back depending on how you looked at it. But Belle slept, so over the past sixty years, he’d grown accustomed to it.

It was nice in a completely mundane way. He enjoyed lying down next to Belle in their bed at the end of a long day, shutting his eyes, and letting his mind quiet for a few hours of blessed relief. Belle would curl up in his arms, her warm little body pressed against his always the most soothing balm for his aged and weary soul. She would always roll away from him in the night, finding her own space and sprawling out until Rumple was relegated to a small corner of their marital bed. A few times she’d actually kicked him flat out, waking up to find him sprawled on the floor and issuing kisses and apologies. She always promised to do better, to not steal the covers or the bed’s real estate for her own, but every night he still ended up pushed to one side of the bed. He wouldn’t have traded those nightly kicks in his back for anything in all the world. It was real and it was theirs.

Rumplestiltskin woke up that morning the same way he had every day of the past sixty years, occupying a roughly three inch slice of the mattress. He rolled toward the center of the bed, reaching out for Belle to pull her to him and spoon up behind her until they were ready to start the day. Living in a land of eternal sunset meant their hours were what they made them, but they tried to keep to a somewhat normal schedule.

His hand met with only cold mattress, and Rumple cracked his eyes open, groping around for Belle in the semi-darkness imposed by the bedroom’s black out curtains. She wasn’t there.

It all came back to him then, the blessed ignorance of sleep fading away and the previous day’s events crashing in to his memory with sharp and violent clarity.

She was gone. Gone, and for the first time in their long and often turbulent relationship, she wasn’t coming back.

Sixty years, a child raised, worlds explored, a life lived, and it wasn’t enough. He could have lived lifetimes with Belle and it would never be enough. But Belle had grown old and grey while time never showed its effects on him. Her body had grown feeble even as her spirit had not. And now she was gone, never to return to him.

Rumple rolled back to the edge of the bed, shutting his eyes. He thought he’d cried out all the tears in his body yesterday, but apparently there were still more to come. He wondered how he could survive with this ache in his chest. He wondered how he could ever do what needed to be done when getting out of the bed seemed too much effort. Belle had told him the sun’s brightest set was her own, that the path to the Guardian would present itself now. He had to find them, to end the curse once and for all, and make his way home to Belle. But for now he curled up on his three inches of mattress and sobbed.

He could have the whole bed now. He didn’t want it.


End file.
